Citation

Deane S. Educ. Theory 2022; 72(1): 47-64.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Board of Trustees - University of Illinois, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/edth.12512

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Addressing the problem of rampage school gun violence, this article aims to problematize how we think about agency, in this case when we assign agency to individual shooters but not to networks or objects. In it, Samantha Deane, working within the new materialist and critical vein of pragmatism, situates agency as both limited and widely distributed. She also draws on Bruno Latour to explore new materialist agency and to explain what it would mean to say things are "agentic." Then, connecting the work of Michel Foucault and Donna Haraway, she examines how we might account for the productive power of social gender norms in the actor network. Finally, Deane returns to the implications of shared agency by looking at how teachers are trained to carry a gun. She claims that the aim of civic education ought to be the development of a capacity to act within and on our shared and limited agency, in sum, to share responsibility.

Language: en

Keywords

Behavior Standards; Citizenship Education; Personal Autonomy; Responsibility; School Violence; Sex Role; Social Behavior; Weapons